Deconstructing Pete
Posted: May 14th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 33 Comments »
OK, so, I was doing my usual morning surf on Baseball Think Factory, and I came across a link to this Roger Rubin story – with the headline “Pete Rose: A-Rod shouldn’t get cheated out of Hall of Fame.”
Here was the bulk of the story … as reprinted on the Think Factory:
Rose was inconsistent and erratic during a radio interview on “The Dan Patrick Show.” Despite saying that A-Rod should be in Cooperstown, Rose said he believes that taking steroids is a worse transgression than a manager betting on his baseball team because juicing can have a direct impact on the outcome of a game. “That’s integrity of the game,” he said.
Rose also said that Manny Ramirez should not get into the Hall. Ramirez is serving a 50-game suspension for for taking hCG, a female fertility drug frequently used to counteract effects of steroids.
…Adding to his contradictions, Rose said that he thought Hank Aaron was upset about Bonds breaking his home run record. “Hank was probably (ticked),” Rose said. “He just didn’t show it.”
Saying that baseball records are “sacred,” Rose conceded that there is no way to put an asterisk on the players who have been tied to steroid use.
“I don’t see how you can do it because we don’t know how many guys are really doing it,” he said. “Are you going to do it for one year, two years, three years, four years?
“With Bonds, how many home runs are you going to take away from him? That’s a tough situation for the commissioner. … It’s a mess.”
Well, you might have heard a little something about 09/09/09 — turns out I’m doing this little book on the 1975 Cincinnati Reds. Who knew? And so, I sort of feel like I need to keep up with the sagas of Pete Rose (and Joe Morgan and Johnny Bench and the like). I saw those quotes and thought: “Great, sounds like Pete was all over the map.”
Only then, I listened to the interview. And — hey, I don’t know, maybe I’ve just been working so long on this book that I’m not fluent in Pete-ese, but I didn’t get much of what Roger had in his story.* I heard something different.
*I should say that Roger’s story is a bit more nuanced than the blockquote above.
Here’s what I got out of the interview:
1. Pete did say that taking steroids is worse than betting on baseball; that’s been a pretty consistent position of his. Pete is — and everyone should know this — a hustler. It is part of what made him successful as a baseball player. It is part of what got him thrown out of the game. It is part of what made him lovable (and hatable) when he played. It is part of what makes him seem sad these days when he signs autographs in the Caesar’s Palace shops. Hustle is, probably, the most rooted part of his personality — I think Michael Sokolove’s book did an excellent job of getting at that. In this case, it seems clear to me, that Pete sees the steroid saga as a way to wedge himself back in, to get people to nod and say “Yeah, steroids are worse than gambling.” He rarely misses an opportunity to play the steroid card.
2. However, I don’t think he said that A-Rod should go to Cooperstown. What he said was that he believes in second chances and so he would vote for A-Rod. I don’t think that’s the same thing as saying that A-Rod shouldn’t get cheated out of the Hall. Remember, with Pete, virtually everything he says is self-serving. That’s really not unusual … when you interview someone, what you usually get is self-serving. That’s the nature of interviews.
So, there are two things are work here.
One, Pete is making a play for second chances … something he doesn’t feel he received.
Two, while it is risky to break down Pete Rose logic, I think in this case there’s a point to it:
Here’s a formula that seems to make sense.
Pete Rose says taking steroids is worse than betting on baseball. (Steroids < Betting).
Pete Rose is not in the Hall of Fame (Betting < Hall of Fame standard).
Therefore, Pete Rose should believe that steroid users should not be in the Hall of Fame (Steroids < Hall of Fame standard).
Only, it's a false premise. Pete Rose says taking steroids is worse than betting on baseball, yes. Pete Rose is not in the Hall of Fame, true -- but he believes he should be in the Hall. That's where logic fails. Pete believes his punishment does not fit his crime. He does not think that betting on your team to win (as he always describes it) should keep a player out of the Hall of Fame. So just because he thinks steroids is worse does not mean he thinks it should keep people out of the Hall.
The Pete formula is actually like so:
Steroids < Betting.
Betting > Hall of Fame standard.
Steroids-Hall of Fame formula inconclusive.
I tend to believe Pete WANTS steroid users to get into the Hall of Fame. It doesn’t do him any good at all to have steroid users kept out of the Hall. I don’t think Pete’s a misery-loves-company guy at all. If the steroid users went in, THAT would prove his point … hey, what they did is as bad or worse than what I did, so put me in too. I don’t think Pete is railing against steroid users as much as he’s saying “What I did wasn’t as bad as this.” I don’t think he is confused on the subject at all — the blurrier the line, the better it is for him.
3. Pete definitively did not say that Manny Ramirez should not go into the Hall of Fame. This was classic Pete-ese. He said: “Manny Ramirez, he’s not quite there … but he’ll get there.” That’s Pete saying that Manny the PLAYER had not quite reached Hall of Fame status, but he would be by the end of his career. That’s Pete’s opinion — Manny hasn’t quite done enough to get into Pete Hall of Fame. We can argue about that forever, but it seems to me he was very clearly not saying that Manny should be kept out of the Hall.
4. The stuff he said about Hank Aaron probably should be put in context too. Pete was saying that he would give those players second chances because that’s the kind of guy he is — but he did not want to diminish the emotion of the situation. “If someone was juicing and broke my record, I’d be pissed probably,” Pete said. “No way that … you know … Hank Aaron, was probably pissed, but he just didn’t show it.”
He was just using Hank Aaron to reiterate his own point again (steroid users = cheating the game). But when Dan Patrick asked Pete who he viewed as the Home Run King, Pete said Barry Bonds. “He hit the home runs,” Pete said. And when Dan tried to make it more personal, asked Pete to imagine himself in Aaron’s shoes — a leading question, no doubt — Pete said that, yeah, sure, in that case he would like to think of himself as the home run king, but reality is reality, and nobody has convicted Bonds of anything, which seems to me about the most sensible answer he could have come up with in that situation.
None of this is meant to make Pete sound like a bastion of good sense. He isn’t. None of this is meant to say there is any fair comparison between betting on baseball, which is fundamentally against the spoken and unspoken rules of the game, and steroid use, which until recently was tacitly encouraged and rewarded. None of this is meant to say that Pete was especially good on the Dan Patrick show … he was all over the map, as he can be in such settings.
But I don’t think his general positions are hard to follow. He feels like he’s been treated unfairly. He desperately wants to go to the Hall of Fame. He feels like he has put a full confession out there and has not received the forgiveness that people promised him. He believes that the records in baseball are sacred, particularly his own. He doesn’t know much about steroids and, as such, feels like it’s helpful to rail against them. And yet you get the sense that his real position is more nuanced … or anyway, he’s waiting to see which way the wind blows.
I’m not saying I agree with these things … I agree with some, disagree with others. But I don’t think they’re hard to follow or understand. Personally, I just wish Dan would have just asked him to tell some stories from the 1970s. After everything, I still think Pete Rose tells great stories.
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I’ve heard of people with reading comprehension issues before, but it sounds like this writer has trouble with listening – but maybe he just doesn’t speak Pete’s language.
Wonder if Rose truly still believes he’ll get into the Hall, or if he does stuff like public appearances and radio interviews solely to feed his ego.
I may have been readin wrong, but I think you have your greater than and less than symbols backwards. 10 is greater than 9= 10>9. Or, maybe I just read wrong. thanks
, you read wrong. The disconnect you have is that less than = worse than, and you seemed to read it that worse than ought to = greater than. Have a day greater than yesterday.
Joe, do you also speak Clemens-ese? I’m hoping you can deconstruct his comment that “heart disease runs in my family…my stepfather had a heart attack when he was younger.”
Almost sounds like Rose is gearing up to ask MLB and the public how many countries there are in Africa.
I think you have the essense of what Rose was saying correct. That said, he’s wrong, his gambling was worse and he shouldn’t be in the HOF.
First, Pete is wrong. Gambling is 1000 times worse than steroids for baseball. Roiders are trying to improve themselves to win, to be better. History shows that gambling on baseball leads to throwing games eventually. Cheating to win might be bad, but losing on purpose is the greatest evil to competition ever.
Second, I would like Patrick to have posed a hypothetical to Pete as such “imagine in 10 years, Derek Jeter is poised to break your hit record and it comes out that at one time in his career, he used a PED to recover from an injury, would you be ticked off?”. I am sure we would have gotten a self-righteous, self-serving answer on that one, a much more interesting answer than what he gave about how he thought Hank Aaron might feel.
I thought this was going to be an analysis of the song “Outlaw Pete” …
I’d say the gambling issue and the 1994 non-World Series were worse than steroids.
Pete Rose the ballplayer should be in the hall of FAME.
Pete Rose the person should not.
Until we can separate the two he will be stuck in limbo…
I actually think Pete Rose should be in the Hall. Shoeless Joe, also. I also think that Rose should STILL be banned from baseball for life and beyond. However, I think that should not have an impact on his HOF credentials. I never liked him, but he was a great hitter.
Interesting piece in SI a couple of weeks ago. The writer pointed out Ted Williams always argued that Jackson’s lifetime ban lasted much longer than his life.
I noticed that when talking about A-Rod in the Hall of Fame, Rose says that he would vote for him. I think by saying that HE would vote for him, Pete is saying that if he had a vote (meaning Pete was in the hall of fame) that he would also let A-Rod into the Hall of Fame.
No to turn this into a HOF discussion, but unless sportswriters are going to go back and remove all of the bad character guys (racists, spit ball pitchers, etc) that are already in the HOF, than there is no reason to keep Rose, Shoeless Joe, or any of the steroids guys out due to character issues. Let the best PLAYERS into the HOF and tell the story about what made them great baseball players, even if it did not necessarily make them great people.
I think, for the benefit of every Reds pitcher who got overused with the potential it was to win Pete a bet, that Pete deserves to be kept out of the HOF. Given how much Rose has shilled since retiring, I suspect that he didn’t keep the kind of funds any player with a long successful career should have kept, which gives more credibility to the notion that he cared about his bets, possibly caring enough to change his managerial approach, possibly enough to injure his players. So yeah, put me in the Rose hater category.
Despite my name being Pete, I am not Pete Rose…just saying…
OK: On one hand, I feel a little bit sad for Pete Rose. His punishment has been similar to the oasis in the desert; you see it, but you can never have it.
On the other hand, Rose made his own bed. It’s been made abundantly clear all across baseball that you CANNOT bet on your team and expect to survive getting caught. You’re done if you get caught, period. The fact that he was his team’s manager only makes his crime more severe.
I guess this is my point: his punishment has surely been awful for him, but it was his own fault. No matter how he tries to explain this, steroid use is NOT an integrity of the game issue, but having a financial stake in whether the team you are managing wins or loses is. It’s allowing a third party to influence the game. With steroids, a large number of those on the field were using, and the game is still being decided or at least influenced, by the players.
Oh…
I think Rose and Shoeless Joe should be in the HOF…but with absolutely enormous sections of their plaques dedicated to the assorted ways they tried to ruin baseball.
Richard, I recall potential HOF-er Jim Kaat (not Rose) was the one who advocated moving the Reds to a 4 man rotation which killed Soto’s arm.
I don’t remember who first proposed it, but I like the post-mortem solution for morality-challenged inductees. Put them in the HOF after they’re deceased. That way Shoeless Joe gets in and Pete get in (not for a long time, I hope), but he’s not able to profit from it while he’s alive.
I think Pete should be in the hall. He should be banned from baseball and not be allowed to manage or work for a team, but he should be allowed in the hall. Nothing shows that Pete ever tried to throw a game or anything like that, so I think his situation is different from Shoeless Joe.
Red #4 –
Here’s my translation of Clemens: If I fling enough shit at the wall, some of it will eventually stick.
Alternatively: I’ve thrown everyone I know who’s still alive under the bus and it’s not working. Let me try some dead people; maybe I will at least get a sympathy vote.
Logic and integrity are not his strong points, any more than they are Pete Rose’s.
Just read Pat Jordan’s article on Pete Rose Jr. the other day. Great piece of writing by him, as usual. Anyway, what I got out of that was that Pete is all about Pete. I think anything Pete says revolves around that central theme.
I’m really excited to see what Joe has to say about Pete in his new book…9/9/9
isn’t the Hall of Fame a privately held institution? I mean, there’s no official connection between the HoF as an entity and major league baseball as an entity…right?
so if Pete’s banned from baseball…that really shouldn’t have a thing to do with being banned from the HoF, since the two institutions are independent of each other.
i imagine the HoF has a rule about a player being in dutch with MLB precluding them being eligible for the HoF. but i think that they might could serve themselves better, considering that they’re essentially a museum, after all…if they removed that from the rules of eligibility.
I’d even go further, and see if the HoF might be inclined to drop the character clause from their eligibility requirements…considering how (shamefully) often they’ve been ignored anyway.
Something that simple…would mean that MLB can continue to pee all over Joe Jackson and Pete Rose, officially…so none of us ever forgets that breaking The Rule is the mortal-est of all baseball sins…and the museum can do what it ought to be doing, celebrating the best players.
After all…a museum? Are they really sposed to be in the business of judging people’s ethics? No one seems to be all worked up about…Van Gogh’s eccentricities. It’s the art, not the artist.
Same shud apply to a baseball museum, i think…
The HOF added the rule you’re talking about specifically to keep Rose out.
I understand, or at least assume, that the primary motivation for being elected into the Hall of Fame is the money associated with having that title…for that, I cannot blame Rose’s dogged pursuit of enshrinement…however, in the context of immortality – Rose should embrace his exile…if you look at the history of the game, the average person has no idea who Nap Lajoie or Tris Speaker or Eddie Collins was…but they do know the name Shoeless Joe Jackson… his legacy is his infamy, but nonetheless, it is fueled by it….Second, the man can live the remainder of his life as walking martyr – victim of the inflexibility and hypocrisy of the game and the people who run it…or at the very least, those who choose to believe that viewpoint will always have a rallying cry….for those reasons, Rose’s name, the banished Hit King, will forever be on the lips of those discussing the game, its beauty and its tragedies…
Lookit…a HoF without Pete Rose…or Shoeless Joe…or Bonds…or Manny…or A-Rod…has a serious set of holes to overcome.
That said, his transgression is serious enough that he should not be allowed to hold any position with a baseball team that gives him access to players, with the possible exception of giving them the “I-gambled-and-it-cost-me-my-entire-life” speech during spring training.
But for all the Pete haters out there, and there are tons, the best way to make him go away is let him in the Hall. Once you take away his stage, he becomes as irrelevant as listening to Bob Feller ranting against Nolan Ryan being admitted to the Hall of Fame.
Joe – Sincere thanks for this post. It is why I am a devoted reader. I could gush here but just… Thanks. Absolutely nailed it. CAN NOT WAIT for 9/9/09.
And Pete does tell good stories.
One perspective I’ve rarely heard discussed is the fact that the HOF is largely irrelevant to Pete Rose. IMO it is one of the true ironies of this entire story. I know it means a lot to Pete personally to be recognized and honored by his peers but…
In the macro – If it indeed is a hall that houses “Fame” Pete Rose does not need to be there. I dare say Pete Rose is far more “famous” than 95% of anyone in there and will be whether this building and whomever it is that decides that these busts and plaques and objects go there, want him to be or not. And he will be for a very long time. No baseball fan and hardly a casual one will “forget” Pete Rose and what he did on the field.
I say Pete should just relax (impossible?) and listen to his own logic… “He hit the HR’s.” Well, Pete you got the hits and whether any of US likes it or not, the record is yours.
Whoa! Gambling on baseball is wrong? Colour me sinful, then. I used to have a system going on the unders and overs, taking an average of each team’s scoring over the previous 12 games (dropping the best and worst scores) and factoring in the starting pitchers’ ERAs. Pretty crude but reasonably effective. I eventually gave it up because it was too time-consuming. That 162-game season is a killer.
For those interested, latest odds on the Royals-Orioles game, as quoted on the New Zealand Totalisator Agency Board (a government-owned entity) –
1 $1.70 Kansas City (G Meche)
2 $2.10 Baltimore (J Guthrie)
Total combined runs –
1 $1.90 8 runs & under
2 $1.85 9 runs & over
I despised Pete Rose when he was an active player and NOTHING I’ve read in the ensuing years has changed my opinion of him. To the contrary, reading about what a jerk he was only solidified my stance toward him. I wouldn’t mind seeing him elected to the HOF posthumously but NEVER while he’s still kicking. I don’t think he should get that satisfaction.
the sad thing about Manny and others like him is that juicing might not even help pro ball players play any better
Amen to Brent (#7) and Richard (#12)…
Betting on your team (when you are the manager) opens up the possibility of playing for the one win, when a season is determined by who does the best in 162 games…
THAT goes to the integrity of the game more than steroids…
Players have always been determined to find ways to get an edge–some call it cheating… To me, in baseball, gaining an edge is a part of the game, whether it’s stealing a sign, throwing a spitter, etc… In the 1800s players used to cut bags because the one umpire was looking somewhere else–it was a part of the game…
Gambling on your own team opens up the potential of screwing up a season (w/ an arm injury, in particular) in the attempt to gain one win…
You can’t justify it at all, even as Pete works to every day…
You hit it on the head. You must look at anything Pete says or answers through his eyes all the while asking the question “How does this affect Pete Rose?” Because he is and always has been that self centered.
Hey, I’ve always felt he should be in the hall, but not be allowed to go there to bask in the induction-no ceremony, just a plaque unveiling-without him there.
I don’t think it is easy for him to see a world now where it seems as though all anyone has to do when they screw up is either deny it(If there is no proof) or offer an insincere token apology (once they are really caught) and all is eventually forgiven- almost no matter what. You just have it plastered on Sportscenter complete with what if questions and innuendo until something else happens and they move on(You know, like Brett Favre goes to the store)
I think he looks at that and says “I denied, I apologized, WTF?”
Pete loses me completely with the notion that steroid use is worse than betting on the game. Nuff said….
Pete Rose would have to be elected by the usual electors. It’s questionable that he would get the votes.
What is the current MLB policy for betting on baseball?
For example what would Manny’s punishment have been if he had been found guilty of betting on baseball rather than taking a banned substance? Would he be facing a lengthier/shorter suspension or would he be kicked out the game? Find the answers to that question and you’ll find your answer to will Pete Rose go to the HoF
F*** Pete Rose. I’m sick of his self-serving crap. He’s an idiot and should be kept out of the HOF for life. If he gets in after he’s dead, that sends a message that gambling is bad, but eventually that will be glossed over as forgiven once you’ve kicked it. If Shoeless Joe STILL isn’t in the HOF after this many years, why should Pete Rose get in now or any time after he’s dead? Shoeless Joe should get in before Pete does. Just my humble opinion.